


Man

by petersnotkingyet



Category: Graceland (TV)
Genre: Coping, Dysphoria, Fist Fight, Mike-Centric, Set in Season 1, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, ftm!mike, mentions of bello, trans!Mike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 16:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1905147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petersnotkingyet/pseuds/petersnotkingyet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike Warren is a man no matter what's in his pants, on his chest, or anything else.  Now there's just the matter of surviving his assignment at Graceland without anyone thinking otherwise.<br/>There's a reason he's good at undercover assignments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man

In a house of federal agents, keeping a secret was difficult even for someone as practiced as Mike. But if he could make stay in the closet for sixteen years and go to public schools in fucking Virginia and make it through the FBI Academy, he could survive an assignment that involved living in close quarters for a few months.

It didn’t take long for Mike to figure out that his best chance to do laundry without getting caught was to do it in the early hours of morning before anyone else was up. After a month or so, Paige caught on that Mike always wore shirts to the beach, but it was easy enough to excuse that with a list of “I’m so white I-” jokes. By his third month at Graceland, everyone had accepted his aversion to even partial nudity without question.

While most teenage boys jacked off into socks, teenage Mike had developed a habit of using socks to hide “hygiene products.” Even when he was living with people who knew he was biologically female, he had always worried that someone visiting the house would wonder why a teenage boy living with his grandfather had tampons under the sink. In Graceland, tampons and testosterone were neighbors in socks tucked into the back of his drawer.

-

When the others started calling him Levi, it made Mike wonder if that was what it felt like to be named by your parents. To be given a name that fits even though you didn’t choose it. To have a name that’s just there rather than having to fight for it. It wasn’t a bad feeling. Despite his initial reservations, Mike could get used to Levi.

-

Mike chewed through an entire pack of gum and gnawed his fingernails to nubs working up the guts to tell Abby. If their relationship was going to… progress, she would have to know, and Mike tried to reassure himself that if she took it badly or told someone he could pass it off to the other agents as his tactic of cutting of the relationship. Abby was surprisingly okay with it, but shocked to find out Mike’s roommates didn’t know. With some cajoling, she agreed to keep it to herself.

-

A few weeks later, Mike was getting out of the shower when he overheard a conversation between Paige and Jakes. “Who was that singing?” Paige asked. Mike felt his ears get hot as he recalled his shower-time rehearsal of One Song Glory. For all his worries of appearing as a macho-manly-man, Mike could never kick his fondness of Broadway music.

“Levi,” Jakes grunted. Paige’s giggle was audible even from behind a closed door.

“So he’s got the voice and the face of an angel,” Paige cooed.

“More like the voice and the face of a seventeen year old girl,” Jakes scoffed. Mike can hear Paige laugh and smack the Customs agent lightly, but he’s too frozen to appreciate her effort on his behalf.

Mike threw up into the toilet bowl, trying to reassure himself that _he doesn’t know, he can’t know, I did everything right, there’s no way._

-

And then one morning Mike woke up to Johnny rummaging through his dresser. “Hey, man,” the FBI agent greeted cheerily. Levi groaned and buried his face in his pillow. “I haven’t done laundry in like… a month, and I needed a pair of dress socks. You don’t mind, right?” It didn’t even occur to Mike’s bleary, half-asleep mind that Johnny might happen across his testosterone or tampons until they were spilling across the dresser.

The sound made Mike’s insides turned to ice, and he scrambled out of bed, silently pleading with Johnny or God or anyone to let this not be happening, as Johnny examined his findings.

“You’re a girl, aren’t you?” Johnny finally asked, his face—his stupid, naturally masculine face of planes and angles and a harsh jaw covered in stubble—lax with shock.

Mike was upon him before the older man had time to think, gripping Johnny by a fistful of his jacket and striking him directly in the nose. Before Johnny could defend himself, the younger agent landed another blow to his face and then another in his gut. Tuturro hit the ground, flipping the chair he grabbed as he tried to hold himself up, it occurred to him that no one else was home, and Mike looked like he could kill Johnny if there was no one there to stop him. The East Coast native’s fine features were twisted in rage, a sort of wrath that Johnny had never before seen on the face of his easy-going housemate. There was a knee in Johnny’s stomach, and he could barely hear Levi’s words over the sound of his breath leaving him.

_“I am not a fucking girl!”_

In that moment, Mike couldn’t have cared less that this was his housemate, his coworker, his friend he was hitting, but the only thing he could think of was being sixteen and standing in a phone booth sobbing as he tried to remember a number for anyone who would still love him. Sixteen years old and he had nothing but his name and a heartbeat that echoed _boy, boy, boy, boy_ no matter how much he pleaded with it.

It was over just as quickly as it had begun, and Johnny heard the front door slam as he tried to force the air back into his lungs. Blood from his nose had gotten onto his shirt, and Johnny changed and washed his face once he was back on his feet. When the others returned home, he told them that Mike had gone out—no, I don’t know where; I ain’t his babysitter—and Johnny had messed up his face when the girl he flirted with at the bar had a boyfriend.

Mike didn’t reappear before everyone else went to bed, and the two FBI agents never discussed the fight. The next time Mike punched someone, it was Briggs because he had let Mike think Johnny was dead and gone with his last real interaction with Mike being a beating.

-

The only thing his sluggish mind could come up with was: _I got stabbed._ Briggs wasn’t much more coherent; he kept repeating things like, “Come on, Mikey-baby, keep those blue eyes open, stay with me, man, I’m sorry, but we’ve got to keep pressure on it, I’m so sorry, kid.” Then things went dark for a while, and they didn’t light up again until Briggs was holding his hand as he was loaded into an ambulance.

“Briggs… you gotta go…” Mike mumbled. Everything was fuzzy, but now there was a new thought running through his head on repeat. Jangles can’t take this from me.

“I’m staying right here, Mikey,” Briggs promised. The EMTs were ignoring them both as they set up an IV in the FBI agent’s right arm. “Jangles can wait. I’ve got you, kid.” There was blood on Paul’s hands, and it spread to Mike’s and Briggs gripped it between both of his own.

“No—that’s not…”

But Mike was in too much pain and everything was too fuzzy to form the words, and then it was too late. The EMT grabbed a pair of scissors and cuts through Mike’s shirt to get better access to the wound, simultaneously cutting his binder open in the process. Just like that, Briggs got an eyeful of Mike and all of his B-cupped glory. His vision was too hazy to actually see his training officer’s reaction, but Mike could imagine.

Mike tried to pretend that he was crying because of how bad his gut hurt, and he must have been pretty convincing, because the EMTs pumped his IV with enough morphine to make everything go dark again.

-

“You want to put him into a men’s prison?” Charlie yelled at Briggs. Mike leaned heavily against the door frame, forcing himself to silence pained noise he could feel rising in his throat. No matter what was said, he needed to know what the others thought of him now. “Knowing what you know? I wouldn’t trust a prison to look after him when he’s at 100%, let alone now! The kid got stabbed, Paul!”

“Charlie, we’ve been-” Briggs started before DJ interrupted.

“You can’t treat him any different just because he’s trans,” Jakes grunted, and Mike could hear the fridge opening. “He’s had tits the entire time he’s lived here. You just now happen to know about it.”

“I’m not going to treat him any different!” Charlie retaliated. “But you can damn well bet that the inmates will. And what about Bello? Do you think he’s going to be understanding of the kid’s fucking gender identity?”

“No one’s going to know, Chuck,” Briggs argued. “We’ll tell the guards to keep an eye on him, and put him in a solo cell. We’ll get him time in the shower blocks without anyone else around. If the kid can go stealth living with all of us for eight months, he can make it a few nights on lock-up.”

“Guys,” Paige broke in, locking eyes with Mike where he was poorly concealed in the doorway, “shut up.”

Everyone was dead silent as Warren edged into the room. “I just… came to get some juice,” he said awkwardly, holding up his cup as if he needed proof. Jakes didn’t say a word as he poured Mike some of his orange juice, and Mike felt obligated to say something. “I can do this,” he blurted, unsure as to whether he was reassuring his housemates or himself. “I can do my job in a men’s prison. I’m a man. I can do it.”

“Alright,” Charlie finally relented. “I believe you. Just… be careful, Mikey.”

“I can be careful,” Mike promised earnestly. He’d been careful his entire life, and after everything that had happened, prison seemed like nothing. Maybe it was just the pain meds he was on, but it seemed like four walls and some criminals were a lot less intimidating when his body had been a jail cell for his entire life.


End file.
